The Corzine Perspective: You decide; he sure won't

In this blog I employ a device I call "The Moron Perspective" to describe comments in which a reader shows total ignorance of the political spectrum.

In honor of Gov. Corzine, I hereby create "The Corzine Perspective." This term applies to people who are plenty smart but who for some reason lack the ability to reconcile two conflicting ideas.

That's our Governor. I've been covering his speeches and press conferences for almost nine years. I have rarely sat through one in which he did not exhibit this tendency.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger Please don't make me make up my mind

In his State of the State address the other day, for example, the Gov made the usual pledges to attract business to the state and cut property taxes. But he also expressed support for the incompetent Council On Affordable Housing (COAH) bureaucracy that makes those aims impossible to achieve.

And then on Wednesday, Community Affairs Commissioner Joe Doria addressed a group of mayors and tried to defend his department's COAH plan. Doria discussed the nuttiest of all the nutty COAH regs, a requirement that commercial developers be required to pay for housing for the workers who will be employed at the new sites.

"With regards to affordable housing, you only build it when other types of growth, like non-residential commercial development and market rate housing, have taken place," said Doria. "The COAH process is tied to a growth share method, so if no growth is taking place in your community, and given these difficult times I would imagine limited growth has occurred, then you are not responsible for building affordable housing."

Sorry for forcing you to read that bit of bureaucratic jargon. But it represents the Corzine Perspective at its worst. Let me translate:

Corzine promised to bring property taxes down. And one of the few ways to bring property taxes down is to add new commercial tax ratables without adding new housing. If you add new housing, the cost of educating the children who live therein cancels out any ratable growth.

Then there's the fact that New Jersey has not added any net private jobs since the Democrats took over in 2002. With an unemployment rate of more than 6 percent, we need jobs for the people who already live here. Nonetheless Corzine and Doria insist that if a town adds jobs it must add houses.

Even his fellow Democrats are being driven crazy by Doria. Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac told me he was not amused to find that the Doriacracy had designated many unbuildable parts of his town as sites for affordable housing.

"They counted the front lawn of the East Jersey State Prison and the Turnpike and Parkway ramps," said McCormac.

There was some minor progress the other day. Corzine promised a moratorium on the 2.5 percent fee imposed on commercial developers. That sounds good.

But in a classic example of the Corzine Perspective, the Gov is not waiving the housing requirement that accompanies new commercial construction, McCormac said.

That means the towns themselves must pay to build new housing. And that in turn means property taxes will go up twice, first to pay for the housing and then to pay to educate the children who will live in it.

As I said, Corzine's not dumb. He just can't decide between two competing courses of action.

This housing issue is just one example. Corzine's indecisiveness permeates every aspect of his governing style. He wants to give public employees big, secure pensions. And he also wants to take a break from contributing billions of dollars into the pension fund, which is headed for bankruptcy.

And so on.

Why does a guy who can't make a decision want to get re-elected to a job that requires above all else the ability to make decisions?